


we lie with the monsters beneath our beds

by Arasei



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, because I like torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-05 07:20:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15858891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arasei/pseuds/Arasei
Summary: He's never liked hospitals, but even the world would not be able to stop him from coming back every day for the rest of his life - for Souichirou is reaching out to tug at his hand, begging him to read ("Mami's really bad at doing the voices, can you please-"), Kagura is complaining with a look on her face that just yells love love love, and Sougo can't remember why he's so terrified of this too white, too clean building, because here in room 156, heaven is a four-walled space.The clock ticks on.Life, Sougo thinks, just isn't fucking fair.-It starts with a trip to the hospital.





	we lie with the monsters beneath our beds

**Author's Note:**

> To those of you who voted angst for my next fic, congratulations! You're just as sadistic as Sougo, if not worse!
> 
> To those of you who voted anything but - 
> 
> I am very, _very_ sorry.

It starts with a trip to the hospital.

Souichirou hasn't been feeling well for days, and at a loss, Sougo and Kagura make the decision to consult a doctor. The answering pediatrician knows next to nothing about half Yato/half human biology, but she does know children, and she sets them at ease by saying it was perfectly normal for flu season, and that he'd be put right by drinking a lot of water, and resting as much as possible.

Days later, his fever disappears and everything is well again. 

But.

Two weeks later, it comes back. Leaves. Comes back. Again, and again, and again in an unyielding cycle. In the short span of five months, Souichirou has suffered no less than ten fevers, each worse than the last.

Eventually, the hospital agrees to keep him under observation and Sougo suddenly finds himself unable to breathe because this is exactly how it had begun with his sister. Watching his son be wheeled away on a tiny gurney is too familiar a sight and he didn't know it could be worse than seeing Mitsuba undergo the same process, but it is, it's so much worse and he feels like he's choking.

Beside him, Kagura is pale and still, and it occurs to him then that they have both had to watch somebody they love slowly die before their eyes. They reach for each other, all clumsy limbs and shaking thoughts, and Sougo silently begs whatever god is up there to spare them from having to watch again.

God doesn't reply.

***

When Souichirou is four, Sougo and Kagura help him ready his backpack and they walk him to temple school. On the way, he slips his hands into their own, skipping between them and swinging their arms with each step. Happy to fill the comfortable silence, he talks of how he is going to have so much fun, and of how he will make as many new friends as he possibly can. 

He hasn't been sick in months, and for that reason, they believe him. Everything is perfect and exactly how it should be. 

That is, until a few days later when it isn't.

Sougo is in the middle of a raid when he gets a call from Souichirou's sensei. "It's your son," she says, voice high with panic, "he just began coughing up blood during class -"

He doesn't listen to the rest.

His blade carves through eleven terrorists in his dash to the door, and with blood smudged cheeks and hands, he runs and doesn't look back.

Having broken at least twenty traffic violations, Sougo stumbles out of his borrowed police car and immediately finds Kagura seated at the front steps of the school, comfortingly rubbing Souichirou's back. He's lying in her lap, crying through his hiccups. They both look up at him with despair. 

"Papi," his son whimpers, "I don't feel good."

Sougo's heart breaks.

Later as they're watching him sleep, buried in layers of hospital sheets, he gets a call from Hijikata. "Go," says Kagura, bags under her eyes and exhaustion in the set of her mouth. "I'll stay."

Sougo leaves the room and flips open his phone, pressing it to his ear so hard it feels like punishment.

"Sougo!" Hijikata yells, the tinny screech tearing open his eardrums. "You left in the middle of an operation! Where are you, you bastard?!"

He doesn't speak, just slowly slides down the hallway wall until he's sitting on a cold linoleum floor. It hasn't gotten any softer since Mitsuba. 

"Sougo," Hijikata says again. " _Where are you?"_

Overhead, a speaker suddenly blares to life. "Paging Doctor Arakina to the front desk, Doctor Arakina to the front desk. Thank you." The speaker crackles and shuts off, and all he can hear again is the faint background noise of the hospital. 

Hijikata is silent on the other side of the phone. He no longer needs to ask for Sougo's whearabouts.

"Hijikata-san," Sougo eventually says, his voice breaking because he is breaking, little pieces of his soul scattered by the heel of his blood-spattered shoes. "I'm scared."

There is a slight crackle, and more silence. Then, "I know."

Sougo quietly hangs up.

***

The pediatrician, the one from their first visit, diagnoses Souichirou with hereditary lung disease. The prognosis is more speculation than anything as Souichirou's symptoms are not entirely consistent, but since there is no Yato specialist there to correct them, the hospital has no choice but to treat what they can with the knowledge they have. It's also not as if they don't have reason to suspect as such - Sougo does not have to be a medical genius to remember Mitsuba and the very real possibility of the gene having been passed down through him to Souichirou. 

But there is the chance that it could something else. 

_Perhaps,_ the pediatrician hesitantly suggests, _human and Yato biology are just too different._

The words echo endlessly in his head until at some point, it's all he can hear.

"I'm killing him," Sougo says aloud, testing the words on his tongue. They taste like iron, ash, poison, and everything terrible in the world. 

Kagura slaps him. Hard. 

"Shut up," he hears her whisper, her whole body trembling from the force of it. " _Shut up._ Don't you dare... Don't you fucking start!"

He can't look at her. 

He does anyway. 

She's crying, teeth gritted and hands balled into fists, blue eyes digging deep into his soul. Sougo yields even further, heart clenching at the sight. Even furious, she's beautiful. He reaches out, guilty and careful, and when she makes no move to push him away, he sees it for the permission it is. Enclosing her fists into his much larger, calloused palms, he runs a slow, deliberate thumb over her knuckles, smoothing the skin over where it strains against white bone. He's seen those delicate points break jaws, mountains, and spirits, but under the pads of his fingers, they are small. He coaxes her hands open and she intertwines their fingers, and for what feels like the first time in minutes, Sougo breathes. 

Kagura presses her forehead to his chest. "He will get better," she says, quiet. "He is not dying. You are not killing him. He will get better."

Kagura. Ever the hopeful, the optimist, the believer.

She lets go and hugs him, nails digging into the back of his jacket and tears staining the edges of his cravat. He pretends not to notice, hiding his face into her hair because that is all he knows how to do.

His cheek stings.

***

Here is the truth - Sougo fell in love with a goddess.

He does not mean that Kagura is perfect, because she isn't; she is in fact, far from it. She picks her nose and rubs her boogers on his jacket, has a vocabulary of swears worse than the most illiterate trucker, and regularly swaggers down the streets of Kabukicho proclaiming herself a queen.

Kagura is a woman beautifully over-confident, loud, and crass, and he would not have it any other way.

So when he calls her a goddess, he does not mean she is perfect. When he calls her a goddess, he means that she is a woman who came from a planet not of his own, a woman who was born far out of his reach and was meant to stay out of that reach if not for fate, destiny, and every other variant of serendipity.

He means, if he hadn't been so relentlessly selfish, maybe then they wouldn't have to watch their son grow weaker by the day. 

But for sake of argument, maybe it wasn't because of their biology. Maybe it wasn't because they defied nature and crossed the line between deity and human by meeting and falling in love. But then it would be because he had carried something awful in his blood and passed it onto their son. 

Still his fault.

Kagura says he is not killing him, but Sougo knows the truth.

He stole a goddess away from her rightful place in a heaven made of galaxies and stars, and now they pay the price.

***

Sometimes, Sougo has to go back to their house and pick up spare clothes.

Kagura almost never leaves the hospital, and because Sougo still goes to work on Wednesdays and Fridays, he has the freedom to occasionally make the travel to their empty home. He doesn't mind, but there's an awfulness in coming back to Great Edo General each time.

He's never liked hospitals.

On such days, Sougo has to take a few minutes to brace himself before passing through the building's tall, glass doors, clutching a plastic bag of clothes to his chest as he leans against a wall breathing in and out, eyes shut and heart pounding. When he's able to drown out the echoes of Mitsuba's laugh between his ears, he takes it as his cue to force himself inside and move to catch the first elevator to the third floor. 

One afternoon, there's already a woman backed into the corner.

The elevator door closes.

"Are you visiting somebody?" she asks politely. 

Sougo doesn't look at her. "My son."

"Ah," says the woman. Absently, she brushes a hand against the fabric of her dress, smoothing the creases of her white cheongsam. "How old is he?" 

"Four."

The woman smiles a little sadly. "My daughter was four."

Sougo blinks, finally looking up and meeting cerulean blue eyes. "What happened to her?"

"She grew up. I didn't see it."

The elevator dings, opening at floor three. Sougo steps off, thinking, reaching out to hold the door open with his hand. "Are you coming?" 

The woman shakes her head, still smiling. "I'm going up."

Sougo raises an eyebrow but shrugs and lets go of the door. He sees bright red hair tugged into a braid before it completely closes, and he wonders how he could have missed the color before. The elevator dings, and it occurs to him then that Great Edo General only has a maximum of three levels.

He feels like he should be bothered by this, but strangely, he isn't.

His feet move on autopilot, leading him down the hallway. _She grew up,_ he hears, _she grew up,_ _she grew up,_ _she grew up-_

"Papi!" a voice shouts cheerfully. In room 156, Souichirou is tucked into bed, Kagura squished up beside him. His wife looks up from the picture book she's reading to Souichirou and smiles, the curve of her mouth instinctive in its warmth. 

The tightness in his chest uncoils.

He's never liked hospitals, but even the world would not be able to stop him from coming back every day for the rest of his life - for Souichirou is reaching out to tug at his hand, begging him to read ( _"Mami's really bad at doing the voices, can you please -"_ ), Kagura is complaining with a look on her face that just yells love love love, and Sougo can't remember why he's so terrified of this too white, too clean building, because here in room 156, heaven is a four-walled space.

Kouka's daughter grew up.

He hopes her grandson will too.

***

With every passing day, it becomes a little easier to take that first step inside Great Edo General.

He doesn't mention it to anybody, but Hijikata catches the change in him anyway, the bastard. 

"You're getting used to it, probably," he says, crushing the cigarette he had been smoking underneath the sole of his shoe as they walk. "I don't have to wait outside with you anymore." 

He pauses, thinking, and adds, "you're cutting into my extended smoking time, brat."

Kondou, walking on Sougo's other side, laughs and claps a hand on his shoulder. "I wouldn't say he's getting used to it,'" he grins, and moves ahead to hold open the hospital's glass doors. "More like, it's starting to feel as if he's coming home."

Coming home.

After years spent associating the building with split skin, crushed bone, and death as cold as the bodies he leaves behind, it's strange to think of the hospital becoming a place he can look forward to coming back to. But Kondou is not wrong.

Because it feels like home when Sougo and Souichirou pour apple juice into a cup and set it on the bedside table, waiting for Kagura to take a sip and roaring with laughter when she frantically chokes and spits it out after they tell her that was Souichirou's pee sample for the nurse. Sougo falls off his chair unable to breathe, Souichirou loses his mind on the bed, and Kagura, with apple juice dripping from the corners of her mouth, tries to tackle them both, pretending she's not smiling at all. 

It feels like home when the Boss, aided and abetted by a nurse with long black hair and a costumed duck, steals a TV from the rec room and sets it down opposite Souichirou's bed before running like mad to shouts and yells from the hospital staff, who can't very well do anything with Sougo and his two superiors glaring at them from behind the front door, which Kagura calls abuse of power as she plugs in the TV and turns it on to Doreamon. 

And it feels like home when Otae brings tamagoyaki and Shinpachi has to help them scrape it out the window when she's not looking, when they try and play chess before realising neither of them actually know how to play so they do battle reenactments on the board with the pieces instead, when Shinpachi brings his karaoke machine and they have to endure an hour of badly sung Chome Chome, when they forgo hospital food in favor of Burger Prince, and when Kagura wheels Souichirou around the halls in a hospital wheelchair, their son screaming happily for her to go faster so she does. 

It feels like home, home, home, even on Souichirou's bad days, when everything in his body hurts and he can't get up because there's an awful pressure in his head. On days like this, he and Kagura turn off the lights and hold his hands, telling him stories of Jan Ken Pon competitions underneath pretty cherry blossom trees, of broken bones and reluctant team-up's at Kyubei-kun's house, of number two problems in hostage situations and river battles in place of sad goodbyes. These are the stories Souichirou likes most, and he laughs and laughs until he forgets he's in pain and his parents can breathe a little easier.

It's not their house with Kagura's pretty garden and Souichirou's drawing covered room, but at Great Edo General where everybody he loves and everything he could ever need is in room 156, home takes on another meaning.

***

They are playing Go Fish when it happens.

It's 8:36pm, and their visitors have all already left for the night. Sougo is sitting in the chair to the left of Souichirou's bed, and Kagura is seated cross-legged at the foot of it, humming an insurance advertisement jingle as she rearranges the cards in her hands. Souichirou himself is buried into a mound of pillows, small and pale but smiling. He has almost half the deck in his tiny hands but doesn't seem to care.

It's when he tries to ask if his parents have any threes that he launches into a violent coughing fit. The cards fall from his hands and scatter across the floor, and Sougo feels his heart stop when he sees the paper faces covered in thick black blood.

Kagura immediately moves over to soothingly rub Souichirou's back, coaching him through the proper breathing exercises. At the sight, Sougo comes back to himself and runs to the door, yelling for a doctor. Souichirou is still coughing when one finally comes in. 

The woman looks to the black and red stained sheets and pales. 

"Get out," she says to Sougo and Kagura. "Out, now!" 

Before they can really comprehend what is going on, they are being shuttled out of the room and replaced with a team of nurses who hurriedly wheel Souichirou out into an operating room.

Kagura's mouth is open in a silent scream. She tries to breathe in and chokes, the sound horrible and pleading _please let him be okay._ They move back into room 156, kneeling on a floor decorated with playing cards as if about to pray. If it didn't feel like everything in him was being strangled alive, Sougo might have been tempted to laugh - as if either of them believe in a god anymore. He picks up a card and holds it so tight that the edges cut into his palm and draw blood.

A king of hearts stained in black and red.

***

In Sougo's life, he can count on one hand the amount of definining moments he has had.

The first, meeting Kondou Isao.

The second, meeting Kagura.

The third, Mitsuba dying.

The fourth, marrying Kagura.

The fifth, Souichirou being born.

That night, he is able to count a sixth defining moment.

 _He won't make it through the night,_ the doctor had said. _I'm sorry._

Sorry wasn't good enough.

Sorry doesn't bring back the feeling in his chest when he watches Kagura softly sing their son to sleep, doesn't return the sticky texture of flattened petals between fingers when he teaches Souichirou how to braid flower crowns for Mami, doesn't compare to the immeasurable pride that blooms behind his ribs every time Souichirou shows him a new crayon drawing he'd done just for them. Happiness so big it feels like his body is too small to contain it.

Sorry doesn't replace the taste of ash on his tongue at the thought of the memories they've built in this too white, too clean building, twisting into something dark and faded, moments that will haunt him forever in the form of ghosts and echoing laughter. Memories that will remain memories and not stories they can pass down to a grandchild with Souichirou's nose.

Sorry means nothing in a world where he will never again feel what he felt upon hearing Souichirou's first words, seeing his first steps, being there for his first day of school. A world full of other firsts that Souichirou will never have.

Sorry wasn't good enough. But how can Sougo even begin to say it?

Small and dying and hooked to a hundred tubes, Souichirou sleeps in his cot, oblivious to his mother squeezed beside him on the bed and soundlessly crying onto his tiny shoulder, breathless from wishing and hoping.

It's 3:18 in the morning and it feels like Souichirou is not the only one dying.

"What do we do?" Kagura whispers, the words trembling in the air. "What do we _do?_ "

Sougo sits on the edge of the bed. It's too small for the three of them because Souichirou is too small and too young and life just isn't fucking fair.

He thinks of a million different ways to say what he wants to say, every letter, every word, heavy in his mouth. He thinks he gets it now, why parents are meant to die before their children. 

"Souichirou," he says, thick and quiet. It surprises him to hear that his voice works when it feels as if he hasn't spoken in years. "I... Do you remember the first time you won at Uno?"

Souichirou does not reply, but Kagura swallows and lifts her eyes to meet his. Sougo doesn't look away. "We actually pretended to lose so you wouldn't be upset, so it doesn't really count as a win."

Kagura chokes, surprised at Sougo's confession but even more so at the watery laugh that tumbles out of her mouth. There is something comforting in the sound of it, and he latches onto the feeling as gratefully as he does when Kagura reaches out a hand for him to take. Their fingers interlock together on the bed. "Souichi," Kagura whispers, her gaze never leaving Sougo's. "Eating broccoli doesn't give you flying powers. I just told you that so you would eat your vegetables."

His eyes burn underneath the pressure of tears and a wobbling smile. "Santa isn't real, Souichi. We were the ones who gave you your presents and ate the meat buns you left out for him."

"Souichi, Gin-chan wasn't the one who stole your Halloween chocolate, it was me."

This goes on for a while, their confession of secrets and happy truths, and he is scared, so scared, but he hopes this pocket in time will stretch on forever, this calm before the inevitable crushing storm.

"Souichi," Sougo says again, but this time it feels different. 

"There was never a monster under your bed. I never told you the truth because I liked checking every night to make you feel better. I liked how you needed me to keep you safe - and I liked how you would hide under your sheets while I looked and wouldn't come out until I said it was okay."

He pauses, struggling and wishing and hoping, Kagura watching him sadly as she waits. Her hand squeezes tighter, fingers digging into his palm. A lifeline.

"I liked how you needed me," Sougo whispers. "Because I need you too. I need you to beg me to check under the bed, I need you to keep making crayon drawings of us, and I need -" he stops, unable to breathe. "I just. I need you to be alive."

Kagura sniffs and tucks her head into Souichirou's neck. Sougo forces his eyes shut. "I'm sorry I lied," he says, and it feels like finality.

But then -

"Papi," Souichirou murmurs. Sougo jerks, almost falling off the bed in his surprise. His son coughs, a weak laugh caught in his throat. "That was really mean of you."

Kagura inhales a shuddering breath like it's her first time breathing. She buries her face into Souichirou's hair, half laughing and half crying, only pulling away long enough to pepper Souichirou's cheeks in hurried kisses. "We're sorry!" she gasps, ignoring Souichirou's faint whines. "We are so sorry for lying!"

Sougo is laughing too, desperate and relieved. He presses a kiss to the side of Souichirou's head and doesn't move for a long time. 

"Pa- _pi,_ " Souichirou protests gently, and Sougo is still chuckling when he finally lets go. "I'm sorry," he says. _For everything._ "How can we make it up to you?"

Souichirou lifts a finger to his mouth. "I want apple juice," he says with a weak smile, and in that pocket of time, room 156 is heaven.

The clock ticks on.

Life, Sougo thinks, just isn't fucking fair.

***

In his mind, it is not a funeral.

From Sougo's experience, funerals are Yamazaki dressing up as his own ghost, Hijikata and the boss running scared from a restaurant owner's spirit, and a long conveyor belt stretching across Kabukicho. 

Funerals are China in a white dress lying in a bed of burning flowers, him slipping a pink rose next to her ear, and her eyes screaming a promise of all the different ways she would tear him limb from limb.

Funerals are a sort of happy middle before the unhappy ending.

This is not a funeral.

For some god-awful reason, the weather agrees. The skies are a lovely shade of blue, white cotton clouds floating across a bright yellow sun. It's the kind of day people write poetry about, the beautifully ordinary ones you keep forever not because they're special, but because they aren't. It is on sunny days like these that Kagura would have opened her parasol to take Sadaharu out for a walk, calling for Souichirou to slow down because he was already running out the door. They would have joined Sougo on patrol and walked around town together because together they were the happiest, and it would have been just another tally in a long score of happy, uneventful days.

It's a painfully beautiful ordinary day and Souichirou isn't there to see it.

Almost everybody they know is in attendance, standing around a rectangular hole and waiting. Amongst those familiar faces, only him and Kagura are not crying, something which should bother Sougo but doesn't. After cradling a small body in their arms for hours, it is no surprise that they have no more tears left to give.

(He quashes down the small part of him that is still hoping for the coffin lid to miraculously fly open, followed by Souichirou climbing out laughing, smiling, and alive). 

Souichirou does not kick open the lid and announce the whole thing is a joke, people cry, the funeral continues, and the too small coffin is lowered six feet deep in a too small hole.

Kagura's hand is painfully cold in his hand, and he can't tell whether she is merely holding onto his fingers or squeezing them to dust. He's numb all over, and he would attribute it to the fact that it feels like his heart is being buried along with their son, but if that is the case -

then why is he still breathing?

***

They go home. But after everything, it's a home no longer.

Kagura, who hasn't entered the building in months, struggles to take the first step past the threshold. She keeps moving her foot past the doorway only to jerk back as if burned, wringing the folds of her dress in shaking fists and hiding her face behind a sheet of vermillion hair so Sougo does not see her tears. 

So stubborn, even when she's only holding on by a thread. 

In times like these, he knows to wait for the right cue, and so it is only when she looks up at him that he wordlessly leads her past the walled gates of their house to circle the block before trying again to force themselves through their door. Even then, it takes two hours of silent convincing before Kagura can bring herself to enter. 

Everything is coated in a thick layer of dust, and their bare feet leave soft footprints on the cold timber floor. They separate to walk in and out of rooms, familiarising themselves again in an environment that feels almost alien. Despite nothing having being moved, nothing is the same. There is no Souichirou running in the hallway, no shouts of laughter from his room -

Just a dusty house and two broken parents.

***

It's their second night back when Sougo sees him.

He wakes up sweaty and shaking from his latest night terror, sitting bolt upright and clutching at his rapidly beating chest. Next to him, Kagura is mumbling fitfully in her sleep, one hand fisted around the end of his shirt. He gently extricates the fabric from her grip and drags himself out from underneath the blanket. She'll wake soon, but he thinks he should let her sleep for as long as she can. 

He shuffles to the kitchen, dust collecting underneath the soles of his feet (they've yet to clean) and fumbles for a jug of water in the dark. Finally, he manages to clasp a hand over the handle. But someone is already holding it.

Sougo drops the jug. With a loud crash, it shatters across the floor, spilling water and soaking the legs of his pants. He can't even feel it. He's staring at something else.

"Souichi," Sougo breathes. 

Standing on the other side of the wreckage, Souichirou is peering at the cracked glass with curiosity. Sougo watches as he squats and picks up a shard, showing it to him proudly.

"Sougo?" comes Kagura's voice. "Are you okay?"

She comes into the kitchen, and for a moment Sougo is distracted by her pale face glowing almost white in the weak shine of the moon through the window.

"I -" he turns back to Souichirou but he's gone. There's only a broken jug and a puddle of water.

He deflates. _Of course._ He feels Kagura watching him sadly, quietly.

They go back to bed.

***

It happens again and again.

Sometimes, when Sougo is buttoning his shirt for work, Souichirou will be sitting in the corner of the room, playing with his cravat.

Sometimes, when Kagura is in the kitchen, struggling to pour soy sauce over a bowl of tamagogohan without dropping the bottle, Souichirou will be holding onto her leg, tugging on the hem of her shirt.

Sometimes, when he stumbles through the front door, pulling off his shoes with clumsy fingers, Souichirou is sitting on the couch watching television, swinging his legs and staring wide-eyed at the screen.

But it's never Souichirou.

Because the image of Souichirou playing with Sougo's cravat is just an imagined reflection in his mirror, Souichirou hugging Kagura's leg is just a trick of the light, and Souichirou watching TV when Sougo comes home from work is just what his eyes expect to see upon hearing the playful tune of Doreamon from the door.

Soon, Sougo begins to find himself looking for reasons to leave the house earlier in the morning, reasons to stay back later at the Shinsengumi at night, reasons to go to work on the weekend, reasons, reasons, reasons, because the whispers of pity that follow him everywhere at the compound are so much better than the house where the ghost of his son plagues every corner.

"Don't you think you should go home, Sougo?" Kondou asks gently one night. "China girl is probably waiting up for you."

Sougo doesn't trust himself to speak.

Kagura _is_ waiting. Just not for him.

She's waiting for someone who is there and not there all at once, someone six feet deep under a small gravestone named 'beloved son,' someone who is never coming back. She waits and waits and waits, staring blankly at the closed door of Souichirou's room, looking as if she's been standing in front of it all day, unable to open it in the hours Sougo has been at work.

How can he go home when he can't even look his wife in the eye without feeling an insurmountable wave of guilt? How can he go home when home is not even a home?

So he stays away.

He sleeps in his office, eats at the compound, pulls away further and further until he only sees Kagura a total of an hour every week. 

She doesn't ask, doesn't turn on him with fiery blue eyes and floating vermillion hair, doesn't drag him back with the force of a hundred bulls raging in a china shop-

She lets him go.

He lets her let him go.

***

For two months, Sougo merely exists within the Shinsengumi walls.

When he was still sharing a house with Kagura, he would at least still lead his division members through some of the routine backbreaking drills from before, sometimes with a furious vindication borne from anger he didn't know where to place. Without Kagura, however, he's lost even that. The fear, the frustration, the _guilt;_ without his last tether of home, there is nothing left but an empty shell.

In the light of day, he hides within the dark confines of his room, curled underneath a futon, eyes burning from the weight of too many sleepless nights. 

Under the shine of the moon, he wanders the empty halls, running his hands along plaster walls and wondering what it would be like to just float away.

He loves this building and the courtyard opening to stars. He hates it. 

He loves his house and Kagura's pretty garden. He hates it.

He loves the hospital and room 156. He _hates_ it.

He hates it, hates it, hates it, because these are the places with his best and worst memories, places that had always been home because of the people in it, places that despite everything, are now nothing. 

He stays though. 

And for two months, Sougo merely exists. He wakes up, eats, throws up, sleeps, wakes up, and repeats it all again and again because his son is dead and he isn't, and he wants to preserve all the many places he called home, he wants to slash it all to pieces, wants to stop retching into the toilet at two a.m. in the morning, wants stop feeling raw and scraped down to the fucking bone -

He wants to stop seeing the ghost of his son whenever he closes his eyes.

Four months, nine days, seventeen hours, and forty-two minutes after Souichirou dies, Kondou knocks on his door.

"Sougo," he says, and it's different to the way he says it when coaxing Sougo with a tray of food. It's different and Sougo knows what's coming, and so he merely buries himself into his futon a little further. On the other side of the door, Kondou hesitates.

Then -

The door slides open. Hijikata, looking horribly the same. Like Kondou, he is kneeling, but with a hand in his pocket and the other curled around a cigarette. He has the decency to snuff it out, but the sharp scent of nicotine still pervades Sougo's senses when his vice commander stands and enters the room. Hijikata silently encourages Kondou to do the same and together they sit at Sougo's side.

He pretends to be asleep.

There is a long pause before -

"She's leaving."

And the world stops.

"Toshi," Kondou warns, but the damage is done. Hijikata continues, his expression unchanging. "Yorozuya says she'll be gone by tomorrow morning. Thought you should know."

Kondou opens his mouth to protest, but he sighs instead, slow and regretful. "Sougo," he says, faltering before reaching out to gently brush back Sougo's hair from where it is plastered against his pale forehead. "I'm sorry." His calloused hand, though comforting and familiar, is nothing like Kagura's.

That, Sougo thinks, is how he finally breaks.

He curls into himself, shoulders trembling. He doesn't deserve her. He knows. If he was Kagura, he thinks he might have even left after the funeral. What's the point in living on an Earth where the only person you have left is a broken man?

But it still hurts.

How does he go on without her or their son at his side?

God, he's stupid. So stupid.

"Tell her..." he begins hoarsely, grit in his chest and ash in his mouth, "tell her I-- that..."

How does one even begin to phrase 'I love you,' 'I'm sorry,' 'live beautifully,' and 'don't go,' all at once?

There is silence.

Sougo looks up and stills in surprise at the sight of smiles where he had expected to see frowns.

"She knows," Kondou says warmly. "All of the things you can and can't say. She knows." He stands up with a grunt, the air around him newly cheerful in the light of his small grin. "But someone like her would want to hear it from you."

He opens the shoji doors leading out into the courtyard with renewed flourish. The sunlight that streams in is like fire in Sougo's lungs.

"She won't want to see me."

"Not when you look like that," Hijikata says, also standing up. "When was the last time you took a shower?"

_I'm just telling you to change out of those rags 'cause they stink._

There's bile coating his tongue and his voice feels like nails in his throat, but he asks anyway, "what are you saying I should do?"

The words are tired, drained of all emotion. He has nothing more, he's lost everything -

But his superiors smile.

Kondou, soft and warm.

Hijikata, sharp and knowing.

His stomach twists. He knows what they mean to say before they say it.

 _No,_ he hears, _you haven't._

Hijikata lights a cigarette. Kondou holds out Sougo's folded uniform.

"Go get your China wife."

***

Though a part of him had known it would be empty, Kagura's lack of presence in their once warm home still cuts like a blade carving into his stomach.

The last time he had entered this house without his wife at his side, Souichirou had still been alive. He had yet to fear ghosts because his son had still been waiting for him then, eager to welcome him with outstretched arms and a grin stretching his cheeks. 

A part of him had known the house would be empty, but it hurts anyway.

He slips off his shoes and walks to Souichirou's room, standing in front of the door like he had so often seen Kagura do. He stares, taking in the worn scratches in the wood from Sadaharu's claws, the grime darkening the paper of the shoji door. In the corner, he sees the dent from when Souichirou had once stubbed his toe. Sougo closes his eyes. 

He slides the door open.

Much like the rest of the house, everything within is coated in a thick layer of dust. They could never muster the courage to clean; it felt too much like cleansing, like starting anew, something neither he nor Kagura could face. Wordlessly, they had agreed to leave the room untouched. Today, Sougo breaks that silent agreement.

The dust muffles his footsteps as he enters, and as he looks around, he tries to picture what it had looked like before. In his mind, everything is brighter, softer, the afternoon sunlight catching the edges of polished furniture, warming a square on the clean tatami mat. Even when the day fades to night in his memory, light still pours from every corner of the room.

Around him, his ghosts come alive.

_"Papi, you promised you would check, remember?"_

Sougo sees a version of himself hiding a laugh in his sleeve as he dutifully kneels beside the bed to look underneath. _"Okay, okay, I'm checking,"_ says the other Sougo, while Souichirou looks on from above, his worried face half hidden in the sheets pulled up past his chin. 

His father soon reemerges, grinning. _"No monster."_

Souichirou lowers his sheets a little. _"You're sure? You promise?"_

The other Sougo holds a solemn hand to his chest, struggling to contain the smile pulling at his mouth. _"I promise."_

Everything is brighter, softer in his memories. Because they are just that; memories.

The ghost that peeks from behind furniture, smiles in the reflection of windows, looks at him like he's the best thing on Earth, he's not real. Only moments from a past he so longingly wants back. 

And suddenly, Sougo understands what his superiors mean to say. Because there will never be a time when he doesn't wish for those days to return, days when smiles weren't numbered and seemed to last forever, but they're never coming back. And he can't spend the rest of life looking for them in every corner when there is girl with vermillion hair he needs to chase and love and cherish forever.

He's done being scared.

Sougo turns his back on the graveyard of buried moments and walks out. Ghosts won't plague him anymore.

***

The balcony of Yorozuya Gin-chan is the same as he remembers - scratched timber floorboards, worn wooden railings, and faded red walls framing a battered door. He's lost count over the amount of times he's seen that door slide open, whether it be with sluggish energy or furious jubilee, but it is the first time he's ever felt so on edge seeing it open to reveal the familiar samurai standing on the other side. 

For a long moment, Sakata Gintoki merely stares, eyes unblinking and an unreadable expression on his face. Sougo has long since known that behind the dull gaze and lazy disposition, something about the man is just decidedly too vast for the rest of the world, but as he stands rooted to the ground in a charged storm of static electricity, he is even more aware of that presence than ever before.

"Shinpachi," Gintoki finally says, and the storm dissipates. "Come to the grocery store with me."

From further into the house, there comes a clatter and a shout. "Huh? Why would I need to do that?" 

Following the voice, a head curiously peeks out into the hallway. Behind his glasses, Shinpachi's eyes widen in clear surprise. "O-oh!" he stutters, fully emerging into sight. "I remember now! I need to buy some eggs."

With an indecipherable glance behind him, he hurries to meet Gintoki at the door, taking the other man's cue and slipping on his sandals without another word. Quietly, they depart from the house, leaving Sougo standing alone on the veranda.

He takes off his shoes and steps into the hallway.

There's nobody in the living room. The two blue couches are empty, much like the desk perpendicular to them. Colored in the orange light of day streaming in through the window, the whole space seems to him timeless, untouched by the rest of the world. He wagers Gintoki's room is the same, but he doesn't bother to check. He knows where she is.

Soundlessly, Sougo moves to stand at the door of the living room's only closet. Years and years ago, he had once crammed himself into the lowest shelf with Kagura at his side, elbows banging and knees touching as they argued vehemently over a deck of cards. Just like back then, the door is closed, with only a sliver of a gap between it and the wall for one to insert their fingers in between and pry open. Such a small obstacle, Sougo thinks, reaching out a hand, only a tiny hindrance keeping them apart - 

_She won't want to see you._

He stops, fingers hesitating and curling into his palm. 

_She has every reason to turn you away,_ whispers a voice that scratches at the back of his skull. _You left her behind. She won't want to see you._

His hand opens. 

_Maybe,_ he thinks, the word ringing and echoing between his ears, drowning out the hiss of poison as it sweeps in like high tide. _But I want to see her._

And it's enough.

He reaches out to hook his fingers in the gap between wall and closet door, and as easy as breathing, it slides it open.

Kagura is lying down facing away from him, her thin back moving rhythmically up and down as she sleeps. Her breathing is soft, languid, and instinctively, Sougo reaches out to brush away the long strands of vermillion hair from the pale sweep of her neck. So focused is he on the rise and fall of her body that he almost misses the photos pinned up on the closet wall.

Almost.

They take up the entire space, photographs that look as though they been reverently stolen from any and every photo album Kagura could find. They're not amazing - many of them are blurred and amateur in quality, but Souichirou is smiling and waving in each one, whether as a baby in Kagura's arms or as a boy in a hospital gown, and Sougo feels his jaw tighten. 

There is so much raw happiness spilling from every corner of the wall that it is a while before he notices the photo at the center of it all. Featuring the three of them at the park, Kagura is smiling through the smeared ice cream around her mouth, Sougo beside her and pulling a face, his hair sticky from the melted cone his wife had shoved at his head. Souichirou beams up at him from where he is squished in between his parents, carrying a cone holding three scoops of chocolate and looking every bit the healthy four-year-old he should've been. There's summer in the air and sun in their eyes, and because Kagura had taken it at a horrible angle they only just make it into the frame, but it's easily his favorite photo, because of all their big moments -

The littlest ones are the best and worst of them.

There is a universe stuck in his throat when he speaks. "Kagura," he whispers, and he says it like a prayer. "I'm such a coward."

Underneath his palm, he feels the jut of fine bone at the curve of her shoulder and his eyes burn. 

"I never told you - but after everything, I would see him wherever I went. Running in between rooms, pretending to call us on the telephone... I never told you, but I think you knew anyway. And I was ashamed, and guilty, because I was supposed to be moving on and teaching you to do the same, but I didn't know how. And I'm such a coward."

Because it wasn't that he stopped looking for monsters and started hiding from them instead, but that he's always been hiding, always running. At some point, Souichirou would've grown up and out of his fear of the dark, and scared of a future where he would no longer be needed, Sougo would trick his son into thinking there was a creature underneath his bed. 

Scared of reality, he would trick himself into believing Souichirou was still alive. 

"I only realised after you grew sick of waiting, that all I was running from was just another ghost of my invention. And by then... I was too late." His voice fades, but the universe feels less like a burden and more a galaxy. "I'm not here to make you stay; I don't have that right. But I wanted to tell you, just once, whether you were asleep or awake, that your stupid husband finally got it. So you can leave without regrets. Go where you need to go. Do what you need to do. I'll be okay." 

And Sougo thinks he might mean it. He gently runs a thumb over Kagura's cheek, and for what feels like the first time in years, he smiles. "Just leave me a photograph before you go." 

He pulls away. "Live beautifully. Kagura."

It happens in a moment. He feels her before he sees her move, her hand catching his and static radiating from her touch like starburst. 

Sougo's breath stutters. 

"You can't have the ice-cream photo," she whispers, entwining her fingers with his. "It's my favorite."

Kagura turns to meet him, and for the first time in two months, he sees her face. Her skin is pallid, cheeks sunken, the bags under her eyes dark and purple. Maddeningly beautiful.

There are tear tracks following the curve of her face, half dry, and he realises that she's been listening this whole time. "Idiot," she sniffs softly. "Such an idiot."

The lodge in his throat dissolves into stars, and he can't remember what breathing was like before now, but looking into those oceanic eyes he feels _alive_ , and suddenly he's taking in air like a drowning man deprived. "China girl," he breathes, and God, he's missed her. He loves her, he loves her, he loves her. 

Don't go.

"Stupid sadist. Did you think I was leaving?"

Sougo's face slackens. "You're not?"

Kagura stares and half laughs in bewilderment, but there's something in her expression that reminds him of those days before everything and hope flares unbidden between his ribs. "I'm not," she confirms with an incredulous open mouthed smile, looking every bit her age and not a hundred years older. Sougo feels the world restart around him.

You're not leaving.

You're here.

His shoulders begin to shake. He presses his head against their interlocked hands and above, Kagura is watching him with concerned bemusement, hair falling over her eyes, and his life shifts and moves and re-centers, and finally -

He laughs too. A little hysterical, a little disbelieving, but relieved. "We have really stupid bosses," he says, still chuckling. Kagura's smile stretches a little wider as she fully turns her body to face him. 

"Not as stupid as you though," she reminds him. 

"No," Sougo agrees, and he leans in and captures her mouth with his. It's not earth-shattering - the shelf is digging a bit into his ribcage, and his shoulder is pressing uncomfortably against the wall, but Kagura is cupping his cheek with one hand, the other holding on tight to the lapel of his jacket, and it's messy and perfect all at once.

Kagura pulls away, her thumb running softly across the line of his jaw. "I am not going anywhere," she murmurs, meeting his gaze. "So you don't go either." 

He recognises the tilt to her eyebrow that betrays just how scared she is of him leaving, and his chest aches. The shelf she's lying in is too high for Sougo to kneel, but he leans his elbows at the edge, discomfort be damned, and it's with fumbling hands and tangled hearts that he kisses her again. 

And maybe they'll never be okay, never go back to their house with so many broken memories, never see flowers without thinking of the next bouquet to bring to their son's grave, but he can see Souichirou in the crinkles around her eyes and she can see him in the corner of his grin, and in this moment, he knows that as long as they're together, there will be no need to live only in caught memories.

The ghost at his sleeve smiles, though neither of them see.

"I won't," he whispers into her mouth, and it's a promise.

**Author's Note:**

> WAIT!
> 
> Before you get mad, this fic is not, and I repeat, _NOT_ , a continuation of Meet the Okitas!
> 
> Think of this oneshot as an alternate timeline to the Meet the Okitas universe and I promise you'll feel better. Probably D:
> 
> Anyway, this was pretty wordy and reading it over again, the overall meaning was kind of vague, but I just really wanted to get it out of my system. I read a lot of fics where either Sougo or Kagura is the one to die, and I thought, let's go even further. If you're new to my account, I have another story Souichirou featured fic (if it wasn't already obvious) that makes this one soooo much worse, so if you're interested, check it out!
> 
> I'm going to be posting the fluffy fic soon as that came second in the poll, so keep an eye out if you need some medicine from all the angst :_)
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed the fic! I'd love to hear your thoughts and what you liked/hated most about it!
> 
> Till next time!
> 
> \- Arasei


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